The Queen and the Weaver
by Soozie Quixotic
Summary: This is the story of Sylvan the Spider Witch, from her beginnings as a miracle healer in nineteenth-century rural Virginia, to her clandestine relationship with Queen Lucinda, and eventual betrayal at the hands of a trusted friend. Femslash. Lucinda/Sylvan; slight Lucinda/Henry Gardener.
1. Baptism

Each short chapter is a vignette from Sylvan's life, in chronological order. The story is cross-posted to AO3, and later chapters may only appear there due to sexual content that will increase the age rating.

Spoilers for Full Circle (but lezbereal, the book has been out for almost five years exactly as of this posting).

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Sylvan left Earth on the last day of June, 1808. The morning was already sweltering, perfect for a mass baptism in the cool mountain stream. People from miles around brought their sick and injured, human and animal, to be healed by the girl with the touch of God. She was fortunate that all of northwestern Virginia (a few paranoid pastors aside) had decided that her powers stemmed from God and not the Devil. Because of course, all things came from either one or the other.

She balanced barefoot on a slippery rock amid the churning waters, bodies clothed in white, and spontaneous bursts of song. The faithful waded in a barely-restrained line, submerged themselves in the deepest part, and grasped her hands when they surfaced. She stitched their frayed souls back together as a smooth blue rock grew warm in her apron pocket, kept secret from anyone who would deem it diabolic. There was no evil in unclouding an old woman's cataracts or instantly mending a horse's broken leg. Unlike the Devil who bargained with people's souls, she asked for nothing in return. Or so she told herself.

The last to come before her was a blond man, of a few more years than Sylvan's fourteen. She recognized his face as handsome though it did not move her. "God has seen the work you've done on Earth and is calling you up to Heaven," he said as he offered his hand.

The river and its banks erupted with splashes and shouts.

"He's spouting papist nonsense!"

"The rapture is beginning!"

"This rascal just wants to—"

She reached out to probe his mind, but hit a block as if she were threading an eyeless needle. He must be an angel in disguise, she reasoned, because he had no human thoughts she could comprehend. If she ascended to heaven with him, she would be forever young, never a raw-skinned farm wife with a bruised jaw and half her children dead and buried.

Sylvan took his hand. He glanced at her bare feet, said "Come, I'll carry you," and gathered her in his arms. With superhuman speed, he dashed through the river and started up the mountain trail before the worshippers could block his way. The crowd surged forth behind him, yelling threats and prayers.

"Where are we going?" She clung to him as the dense summer-green branches scraped her limbs.

"We'll…ascend from high on the mountain."

Perspiration bloomed on his forehead and his pace lagged, seeming more human than angelic. Their distance from the mob waned, and suddenly she realized she most feared what would happen if the followers did _not_ overtake them.

"Wait, please, put me down! I—"

"Almost there!"

At the far end of a clearing, a swirling disc of fog hung in the air.

"What is that? Where are you taking me?" She tried to pry herself loose, to no avail. The man did not answer as he threw them both into the vortex.

The vast tapestry of stars was unlike any heaven she'd imagined. And at the moment she and the strange man rushed through nothingness towards a pinprick of light, she knew she had been deceived.


	2. Empathy

His name was Henry Gardener. He was seventeen, human, Pennsylvania born and raised. Any angelic nature she'd seen in him seemed doubly laughable the moment she met his fiancée. Lucinda—lithe, golden-haired, ethereally pale—looked every inch like the androgynous painting of an angel that hung in the parlor of a wealthy cousin she'd once visited in Richmond, and whose beauty had lingered in her memory long after she'd departed.

Being half-fairy, of course, contributed to Lucinda's supernatural magnetism. That had taken some time to process—the Fairy Realms, magic, all that supposedly devilish sphere of fantasy that proved more tangible and wonderful than anything she'd read in scripture. Perhaps having her entire perception of reality shattered in a matter of minutes at the tender age of fourteen made her more receptive to the idea of desiring another woman as a man was supposed to. On Earth, no one had explicitly prohibited her against relations with her own sex. They didn't have to. The prospect was simply inconceivable.

She didn't recognize the feeling at first, having been taught that women should not have such cravings for anyone. How scandalized she was when she learned that Lucinda had birthed a child out of wedlock before her engagement to Henry, and then employed a nursemaid to raise the girl. As the office of Fairy Queen passed from mother to daughter, Lucinda was obligated to produce an heir to the throne, but the identity of the child's father was irrelevant. When she spoke of the past (out of Henry's presence, as he was the jealous sort), she mentioned going to bed with men, women, and those who were neither, as if such things were as normal as anything else in the Fairy Realms.

Being a healer, an empath, Sylvan felt Lucinda overflow with love and affection when she and Henry embraced. But Sylvan also sensed her jabs of frustration when Henry made a pointed comment about her past or the way she supposedly flirted with the guards or fairies-in-waiting. And she understood too well the longing that ached in Lucinda's chest when she looked upon a beautiful creature she could not touch. Sylvan had never thought of marriage as a cage built of the conflict between different ways of loving, but Lucinda seemed trapped by Henry's narrow human conception of what love and marriage should be. Or perhaps she willingly imprisoned herself out of love for him, or fear of him abandoning her.

The problem of chastity was its unsustainability. A person such as Lucinda, inclined to spread the bounty of her love to many, could only endure the monotonous touch of one person for so long without either going mad or being unfaithful. She chose the latter.


	3. Beauty

"You have such beautiful long hair, Sylvan," Lucinda said, lounging on a window seat in Sylvan's quarters one evening. "Why do you always wear it up? I've seen it loose not half a dozen times in all the two-some years I've known you."

Sylvan's hands continued to pluck at the harp as she looked up from her work. Her experiment was training spiders to weave according to commands in the form of music. The insects had thus far woven a beautiful tapestry over her window, an exact replica of the section of the magic web around the Fairy Realms. The sunset made it glimmer like threads of molten glass.

"It keeps it out of the way," Sylvan murmured. She always grew so self-conscious when her friend paid particular attention to her body. "Can you imagine all that hair getting in my eyes, getting in my weaving, getting caught in the harp strings? Loose hair is impractical."

"It's perfectly practical for me."

"Well I work with my hands while your job is looking beautiful and charming every diplomat across the five realms into doing your bidding." Blast it! Why did she accidentally say such flirtatious things to the queen?

"Everyone would think you were beautiful and charming too if they actually _saw_ you. But of course that requires leaving your quarters. Why, if you weren't so busy with your experiments, you could usurp me and take over the realms with those mind control powers of yours."

_Beautiful_. _Charming_. Sylvan turned back to her weaving and wished that her hair were down so she could hide her blush behind it. "I would never do such a thing, my queen. Besides, I like it here. The spiders keep Miranda away."

Lucinda's sister was terribly arachnophobic. She'd been increasingly volatile lately—not just because of the influx of spiders in the palace—and Sylvan had been avoiding her as if she were a shadow creature.

The queen's glib demeanor dissipated. She stood and crossed the room to Sylvan's side. "I don't know what to do about her. I can unite the Fairy Realms, even bring the goblins under control, but my own sister? I'm at a loss. That's partly why I called on you."

"She's resentful," Sylvan said. "I'm sure you know that. Sick of always being in your shadow. She feels like she's never accomplished anything on her own—you even engineered her bonding with Faylinn. My advice is don't interfere. Don't go behind her back to talk to Faylinn. We haven't seen much of Miranda lately. I think she's working on something difficult, it's frustrating her, and she's worried we'll meddle like we always do. Let her carve out some independence."

"I…I suppose you're right. You're the mind-reading empath after all. But it's so difficult to just…do nothing. I'm terrified that these tensions will prevent us from ever opening the Gates of Avalon, much less finding it."

"You need to trust Miranda. She understands how important this is just as much as we do. Trust and respect are the key to her good graces. She'll come around. You'll see."

Lucinda inhaled a deep shuddering breath. "Thank you, Sylvan. You always know just what to say to calm me."

She curled a loose tendril of Sylvan's red hair around her slim finger. "You have such beautiful hair. It looks like fire in the sunset."

Sylvan's heartbeat kicked up into a flurry. Her hands froze, unable to focus enough to pluck the harp. "…thank you."

Lucinda played with one of the pins that held Sylvan's hair in a pile on top of her head. "May I?"

"May you what?"

"May I let your hair down?"

"As you wish, my queen."

"Well how do _you_ wish, my friend?"

"I…I would like that very much."

Her scalp tingled with either anticipation or just the sensation of her hair falling down, lock by lock, as Lucinda pulled out the pins one by one. Sylvan tried breathe normally and disguise the gasps of desire that eked out of her throat. This was madness—the queen just liked to make others feel beautiful. It was ridiculous to think she would compromise her loyalty to Henry, especially with someone as rustic, blunt, and inelegant as Sylvan herself. And yet she could not help but fantasize how those perfectly-formed pearly fingernails, now combing through her hair, would feel raking over her bare skin.

Lucinda shifted to face her and now had a full view of her flushed skin. She twisted Sylvan's hair around the fingers of one hand and placed the other hand on Sylvan's cheek. "You look lovely with your hair down."

Her hand traced a path down Sylvan's neck and came to rest on her chest, just above her heart. Lucinda was wearing one of her ostentatious fairy gowns, this one made entirely of peacock feathers that, to Sylvan's eye, seemed to be slightly trembling. Now that she noticed, she could feel the queen's hand shaking through the fabric of the plain blue dress she wore.

"You've always been so kind to me, yet you never lie," Lucinda said. "You never just tell me what I want to hear. You're strong. You're honest."

"Lucinda?"

"Yes?"

"Are you trying to seduce me?"

"Yes." Her face was enigmatically blank. Her voice was flat. But Sylvan could tell when Lucinda was terrified and trying her hardest to disguise it. "Would you like me to stop?"

She thought of Henry and how he would look at either of them if he knew what was about to transpire. She thought of how Lucinda would feel about herself. She thought of the beautiful woman that she loved standing before her and offering at least a moment of affection and pleasure.

"No."

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I haven't written the next chapter yet, but it'll probably increase the rating to M. I'm debating whether I'll post it here and make the story invisible on the front page (only K - T stories display by default, which is annoying), or only post it on Archive of Our Own.


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